


Memory

by lovetincture



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Post-Hell Dean Winchester, Season/Series 04, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:54:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23714710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Dean returned from hell different in a few ways that count. So many things sound the same if you close your eyes.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 66





	Memory

_ There was a woman in hell. There were so many women, but he remembers this one because she had bright copper new penny hair. She’d begged and screamed, and he’d peeled the skin from her bones so slowly. He worked the knife through the soft pad of fat on her belly, pulled it up, up in a Y shape. Down the center of her inner arm, pale skin parting for the blade, blood trickling to the floor, and the screams. Down the middle of her thighs, her shins with their stubble tickling his wrists, down around each ankle. _

_ She screamed then, but you should have heard her when he started to pull. _

Sam looks at him, soft and helpless. He bites his lip, looking so vulnerable, so much like the kid whose nose Dean wiped, whose knees he bandaged, whose tears he wiped away,  _ Sammy, don’t cry. _

He’s not crying now. He’s looking at Dean predatory, coy and confident with callused hands, a blotchy red flush crawling up his chest.

Dean wants. He looks at Sam, mouth dry. His fingers twitch with wanting to touch, but he  _ can’t. _ There’s a good reason he can’t, he just can’t remember it right now. Maybe if he could he could break the spell, get up and go for a walk through dark parking lots that all look the same wherever you go, let the cold night air bleach this sickness out of him—

But then Sam looks at him. Looks at him soft, looks at him trusting and says, “C’mere.”

And it’s like cracking the seal, like breaking the dam, and Dean surges forward. He puts his hands on his baby brother  _ (how could you?),  _ his lips on his neck  _ (disgusting).  _ He works his hand into Sam’s pants and touches the hot, sticky skin below, feels Sam gasp as Dean squeezes him just right, and oh, he is going to hell for this.

Except he’s already been, and that’s the problem, isn’t it? Dean  _ knows  _ things about himself, things he can’t unknow—

_Knows how it feels when he’s got his hands in another man up to the elbow. Rape_ _is too unimaginative a word for the things he’s learned to do, ways to make a person scream and beg him for more. He knows how to_ ruin _them._

He doesn’t think of it all the time. He deals with it, yeah? He did what he had to do in order to get out. In order to get back here (to Sam).

And if he’d started to like it—if he’d started to relish the screams, shedding his own skin until he was more monster than man, if he’d started to believe  _ out _ was a myth, a far-off faded memory—well. That could stay locked in his mind too, along with every other bad, wrong thought he’d ever had, the times he’d fallen asleep with his hand in his pants thinking of Sam, wondering what he was doing so far away in those years they were separated. If he’d woken up confused, dreaming of sweaty skin and the stink of his brother, it was just training. Learning how to keep the worst secrets locked away.

Sam kisses Dean like he isn’t the worst person he ever laid eyes on, like there’s still a scrap of goodness in him, like he hasn’t raped killed gutted sliced electrocuted  _ burned— _ like he’s still the kid Sam remembers, so much younger because yeah, Dean was a kid then. 28 years young and thinking he owned the world, thinking he knew anything, and now there are so many things he would pay to forget.

Sam kisses him like he’s worth kissing.

Sam kisses him like he’s worth.

Sam kisses him.

It’s not the worst thing Dean’s done, not by a long shot, but it might be the worst thing Sam’s ever done. But Dean’s not a hero. He’s certainly not a saint. He wants one thing, just one good thing, so he kisses back. He slides his tongue into Sam’s mouth and licks the taste of cheap, stale beer from it.

Sam makes a low sound in the back of his throat. His hips hitch forward. He grinds himself into Dean’s hand in little stuttering thrusts, and Dean thinks  _ I could die like this, happily. _ It frightens him how much this is the only thing he wants.

“That’s it, that’s it, come on, Sammy. Atta boy.” He whispers filthy nothings against Sam’s lips—filthy because they’re so innocent, the same words he’s probably said a hundred times before, teaching Sam how to tie his shoelaces, how to throw a ball, how to shoot a gun.

He keeps his eyes open to watch the way Sam squints, the way his mouth drops open when Dean reaches his hand a little farther back, fingers tickling against the dry pucker of his hole.

_ He remembers laughing. He laughed a lot, in hell. Everything was so goddamn funny all the time. The sound of bones snapping, one right after the other, that was hilarious. Fingers were easy to break. Bend them back until they fold like twigs and leave them reaching up toward a God that isn’t coming to save any one of them. He remembers laughing when they begged. Wrists were easy, ankles were harder. Legs, those took work but with the right tools—a hammer here, a vise there—all things were possible. _

“Dean. Oh, fuck, Dean.”

He sucks two fingers into his mouth. They taste musky, they taste like Sam, and he loves it, loves it. He loves the way Sam’s eyes go dark, the way his lips go slack as he watches Dean slick his own fingers.

“Do you want it, Sammy?”

“Oh, fuck yeah.”

He brings them back, presses them against Sammy’s hole, tight and still too dry—his hand’s cramping at this angle, trying to fuck through all these clothes. It’s worth it for the sound Sam makes, bruised and thrilled. Wounded. And he’s heard sounds like that, dragged them out of so many people, men and women, souls that were neither—every scream sounds the same if it’s loud enough. Vocal chords all fray the same, but he swears it’s different with Sam, when it’s Sam gasping his name and choking on a sob.

He wants to be here now, doesn’t want to be anywhere else. If he could, he’d pluck his own eyes out, sear his hands clean, scour every last memory clean out of his head. It’s not like that’s a choice.

There are no choices, no options, no angel rescues. He fucks his brother and thinks of blood, thinks of screams, thinks of the amount of force it takes to cut a man Sam’s size into small, manageable pieces.

Sam looks at him after, trusting and sweet, some bitchy comment on his tongue and Dean bites off an automatic retort. If he still prayed, he’d pray to forget. As it is, he just hopes he’ll feel better in some far-off distant future. When it’s over, whatever that means.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture).


End file.
